Tuesday, December 23, 2008

for real

What I found out while we were on holidays was that poinsettias are indigenous to Mexico and Guatemala. I was very happy to discover this. My whole life came into pinprick focus upon hearing this information for I have had a question mark in said life that has continually hovered o'er the yearly potted poinsettia. This singular cute and curvy punctuation has come to represent many questions re: the poinsettia - questions such as why? where? I'm not sure and how come? - each query flooding my mind with concern. Why do poinsettias just pop up in December and vacate the premises after? Where do poinsettias come from? I'm not sure I like poinsettias. (Technically that's not a question of course but it involves mystery and mysteries involve questions so technically it is.) And how come poinsettias represent Christmas? I still have to find the answer to the why and how come (Wikipedia, here I come) but I do know that just knowing they have a real home somewhere and aren't contrived of red construction paper by elves on Candy Cane Lane has endeared me to them and, I believe, (ahem) them to me. The real photo above was really taken in real Mexico and is of a real poinsettia really growing in the real ground with real tropical raindrops upon its real leaves. And I really like it.

There are also poinsettias in India. They grow rather quickly into tall, lanky trees, and the people we knew there referred to them as "Christmas Trees". They are probably popular at Christmas, because that is when they are in bloom--and they are so pretty and red.

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My name is Colleen.I love taking my time and finding beauty and humour in things before they happen - as in seeds and salamanders.

"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back."

C.S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

"Look, it's not in my nature to be mysterious. But I can't talk about it and I can't talk about why."